5th Annual Chris Gray Memorial Lecture

"South Sudan and the Burden of Independence"

Dr Jok Madut Jok is an associate professor in the Department of History at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). Professor Jok conducts research across a number of fields of inquiry: anthropology, history, African studies and public health. He has written extensively on Sudanese politics, the civil conflict and the 2005 Sudanese peace agreement, gender based violence and reproductive health, and the politics of race and identity in the region. Born in the state of Warrap in South Sudan, Dr Jok completed his Bachelor of Arts in arts and humanities at the University of Alexandria, Egypt, and pursued an MA in medical anthropology from the American University in Cairo. He went on to complete his doctorate in anthropology from UCLA. Dr Jok has received numerous awards and honors, including a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship and the Jennings Randolph Senior Fellowship at the United States Institute for Peace.

In addition to his academic position at LMU, Dr Jok is currently a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute, a non-profit research and educational organization based in East Africa. He also holds a position with the new government of South Sudan as Undersecretary for the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. He has founded an educational non-profit in his home village of Marol.

Professor Jok’s current research focuses on the post-independence era in South Sudan and the possibilities for a sustainable peace across ethnic difference in the region.

2002- "Gendered Violence and the Militarization of Ethnicity: A Case Study from South Sudan." (Co-authored with Sharon Hutchinson.) In Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa. Richard Werbner, editor. pp.84-108. New York & London: Zed Books.

2001- War and Slavery in Sudan: The Ethnography of Political Violence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.